26 x x PROFILES x INDEPENDENT COP-II I N a ceremony at City Hall on a spring day in 1 927, Mayor Walker swore in his old friend, Joseph A. Warren, as Police Commissioner. If, as Warren afterward confided to friends, Walker ordered him to abolish the confidential squad, which had been stepping roughly on the toes of politi- cians, Warren either made a mental reservation to ignore the order, or de- cided to ignore it while riding up Cen- tre Street to Headquarters. The air was full of rumors of an impending shakeup, and Inspector Lewis J. Valen- tine, head of the confidential squad, fully expected to be demoted. But within an hour after Warren had taken over the new job, he had called in Valentine and ordered that sur- prised officer to resume his raids on gambling games in political clubs and his spying on dishonest cops. The politicians who had made Walker Mayor demanded to know why he didn't do something. After Warren left office, he told intimates that every time he dropped in at City Hall to discuss official business, Walk- er would open the interview with "J oe, when in the hell are you going to do something about Valentine?" One day, Warren had an answer to this Catonian question. He said he had done something. He had just pro- moted Valentine to deputy chief in- spector. Warren resembled McLaughlin, his successful predecessor, in that he was incorruptible. He was brave and in- dependent, but his executive ability did not measure up to his courage. He was a mild, studious man, and physically delicate. He became preoccupied with improving such things as routine cleri- cal technique in station houses. As a disciplinarian, he put too much em- phasis on penalties, and was meticulous in fining capable cops for infractions of small rules. He seemed, at times, to forget that it was a police department he was running. He pursued his cold- ly furious path of n1eting out justIce in strict accordance with the book of regulations. A crime wave soon engulfed him. Thirteen murders piled up on the un- solved list. The one that broke Warren was the murder of Arnold Rothstein. Somehow the Rothstein killing, with its vivid Broadway background, drama- Lewis J. Valentine -;{ tized Warren's ineptness. Walker privately ad vised him to resign, saying he could plausibly give ill health as his reason. War- ren reminded Walker he had taken the job only for old friendship's sake, and insisted on being given a chance to solve the Roth- stein mystery, to save his own pride. Day and night he labored, until his frail constitution could stand no more. Then he wrote a letter of resignation and ga ve it to a policeman to deliver at City Hall. Re- ports were that it was a bitter document, lashing Walker for lack of coöp- eration. Whatever it contained, Walker refused to accept it and sent it back the same day, insisting it be revised. Warren stubbornly refused, but later in the day friends persuaded him to give in to Walker. He wrote another letter of resignation. It was formal in tone. It expressed gratification over the cordial official relations that ex:sted between Walker and Warren, and gave a desire to return to the practice of law as the reason for resigning. \\T alker accepted this one and handed copies to the news- papers, adding a statement of his own, in which he praised Warren for his faithful service to the city . Warren went to a sanitarium and eight months later suffered a paralytic stroke and died, a tragic figure, at forty-seven. His friends think that overwork on the Rothstein case hastened his death. Valentine expected no deus ex ma- china to save him from political ven- geance this time. Walker asked Grover .,A.. Whalen, the city's official greeter under Hylan, to become Commissioner and save the Department from the Rothstein disgrace. There was a long buildup period in which Walker pub- licly wooed Whalen. Whalen, with a gesture both dutiful and coy, put the matter squarely up to his employer, \Vanamaker's The trustees of the Wanamaker estate, in a dispatch to the Times from Philadelphia, were report- ed as "not unimpressed by New York City's claims upon Mr. Whalen for public service," but, on the other hand, "loath to let him go." After considering OCTOBER I 0, 1 9 "' : N:'., New York's request for four more days, "., the trustees gave in '0 and let \Valker have ..: his Whalen. News- ;tl papers were already discussing where Whalen's snicker- snee would fall first, and the consensus was that it would be on Valentine's neck. The prediction was perfect. Whalen inaugu- r41ted his regime by dissolving the confi- den tial squad. He reduced Valentine to captain. This cut $1,300 a year off Valentine's salary. Every other mem- ber of the squad who could be reduced was. Not content with this wholesale demotion, which in- volved about fifty policemen, Whalen heaped scorn on the squad by compar- ing it to a similar one once headed by Lieutenant Charles Becker. Whalen said he didn't want any "Beckerism," or any "super-authority," in his Depart- ment. "Gum-shoeing and wire-tapping are at an end," he told interviewers with the air of a man bent on a moral cleanup. Valentine, he said, would be assigned to-well, to the Long Island City Precinct in Queens. While this was going on, V alen tine was sitting at his desk in an office down the hall, waiting for his marching or- ders. In his valise he had packed his civilian clothing and the typical impedi- menta a policeman gathers as he goes along-an enamelled coffee pail, a china cup, a nickel-plated spoon, comb and brush, towels, soap C2. e, safety razor. When the news was brought to him, he called in his staff and expressed regret over what had' happened. "N ow you are all going to other cOl11mands," he said. "None of you has done anything he need be ashamed of. You're a fine lot of men and I'm proud to have known you. I know you'll be a credit to your commanding officers wherever you are. You were to me." Valentine fumbled with the catch on his valise to relieve an awkward silence. The men started filing out, some with tears trickling down their cheeks. Patrolman Edward Dauphin, Valentine's chauffeur, took upon him- self the sombre job of driving his ex- '.;':\ . '$+ :;;:::-;:;:.' :=4.:'%1:; \, ""T'...:: j .. .:,:,, ....-%. . ....:... ..; .. ....0:... ". ::-i' ..::, :::;-1